Silver Wings
by akaihane
Summary: Saiya was a normal high school girl, until she fell asleep in history class. Suddenly, she's in Naruto's world. Not only that, but she's lost in a forest and can't find a village. Well, they aren't called 'Hidden' villages for nothing.
1. First Primary

"Speaking"

'Thoughts'

Oh. And for those of you who hate OCs, you may want to leave now. This is an oc story. And guess what. I DON'T CARE IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT. Flame me all you want. It actually makes my day to see that I've annoyed people. Freedom of the press. And you can't make me stop. But if you have an open enough mind to continue reading the story after you read this, congratulations, you have won a spot as 'favorite person of the day.' have a cookie. Enjoy the story.

Reviewing is much appreciated.

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First Primary

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Saiya was sitting in her history classroom pretending to be paying attention. The key word there was 'pretending.' She was actually staring at a distant point somewhere fifty feet behind the whiteboard. Most people would just classify it as staring into space, due to the unfocused look in her eyes, but Saiya always said that she was actually looking at something.

Her teacher was in front of her droning on about some war in Vietnam, but she wasn't listening, history just wasn't as interesting as the other subjects she was taking in high school. For example, her science class was dissecting cats, math was learning how to…to… well, she didn't exactly know what was going on in math, 'cause she wasn't good at it, but it was still far more interesting than this. History just sucked.

Saiya stared at the clock next. The teachers chair had stopped spinning in circles five minutes ago, so it wasn't worth looking at anymore. There were still thirty seven and a half minutes left in the class. She sighed. Why did this class always take three times longer than the other classes she had?

Counting the seconds that were left in the class was getting exceedingly frustrating. She leaned back onto the desk behind her. Constant leaning like this, all year long had left the back of the normally hard, plastic seat, surprisingly springy. It was a great recliner. She closed her eyes and thought.

She thought of her favorite manga and anime, Naruto. It was the force that practically consumed her life. If Saiya had only one wish in her life, it would be to go to the world of the ninja, to learn to fight, control chakra, and do missions for the good of whatever country she was in. unless of course it was an enemy of the leaf, or maybe the Akatsuki. She really couldn't make up her mind which of the two groups she liked better.

A moment later, or what seemed like a moment later, she opened them and received the shock of her life. Right there, on the desk in front of her, there was a rotating sphere of shimmering air about a foot and a half wide. What was even more shocking, after a few seconds, was that nobody else in the room seemed to notice it.

Saiya straightened up in her chair and leaned forward intently. The teacher looked at her out of the corner of her eye, and smirked, apparently happy that she was finally paying attention in class. But a second later, she turned back to the white board, her eyes having never even registered the vortex.

Saiya glanced around the room once again, hoping upon hope that someone else could see it and that she wasn't hallucinating. Nobody was looking.

She turned her gaze back to the center of the whirlwind and stared into it. There was a scene! A place inside the vortex! She leaned closer to see better.

There was a mountain, a mountain side with a village beneath it. The scene was changing, the mountain was zooming into focus; four faces were carved into the side of the mountain.

The faces of the hokages.

Saiya gasped, not caring if the boy next to her thought it was funny that she was shocked (the teacher announced that we had won the war in Vietnam at that moment). Why would there be a scene of Konoha in a mirage of wind in on the desk in front of her in history class? It was an insane.

'well,' she deduced, 'I have got to be hallucinating. There is no way that thing is there. Nobody else sees it. Maybe if I ignore it, it'll go away.' So Saiya reclined back in her chair and closed her eyes again. The kid next to her looked at her weirdly, but wrote it off as another example of weird female mood swings.

'But what if'… thought Saiya, 'what if it was a portal? An invisible portal to the Naruto universe'.

Hesitantly, she opened her eyes, half expecting the vortex to have vanished. But it hadn't. she leaned forward and watched the scene shift again, moving slowly over the village, showing the main roads as they spidered their way to the center of the village. The scene picked up speed. Then it was over the great gates. 'No' she thought. 'No! Don't go! Don't leave Konoha! I still haven't decided if you're a portal or my imagination!' and instinctively, she reached out, over the desk, and touched the edge of the foot wide hole in the fabric of time and space, or maybe just the fabric of sanity.

The instant her fingers stuck, the room froze. The teacher was making a weird face, in the midst of saying something about Japan; her finger was pointed at the southern most island in the chain. Silent student's eyes were glued to her finger tips and one student was in the process of raising her hand. Many others had frozen with pencils in the middle of words, or while trying to stare around the heads of those in front of them.

Saiya's glued fingers suddenly gave a twitch, and began to sink into the image. That was not what she had expected. Saiya panicked, immediately trying to pull her fingers out of the quicksand like force that held them, slowly sucking her in deeper.

She tried to wedge her feet against the ground and push against the desk, but to no avail, even though the chair and the desk both felt like they had been welded onto the floor. Worse still, it was like there was a metal wire that had formed from every muscle in her arm, down her heart, and into her center of being. The portal had seized hold of the wire and was slowly, but with accelerating speed, drawing her towards it.

Losing herself completely as her wrist started to dissapear, she scrambled to get someone's attention. She reached over and pushed the person in the row of seats next to her, who had frozen in the process of blinking. As soon as she shoved, he fell over, like a large, empty plastic barrel, and hit the floor, propped by his head on the row of desk on the opposite side.

Saiya screamed.

No-one could see her, no-one could feel her, and no-one was even alive anymore. The portal had it's grip on her elbow now, and her hand had disappeared from view into inky whiteness that had filled the space where the image had been a few seconds after she had touched it.

She looked around, trying to find something to hurl at it. She picked up her backpack and purse in one go and swung them at the portal. Both disappeared into the whiteness in a matter of seconds, as did the rest of her arm.

Now Saiya was struggling to keep her head out of the pool. She could feel the milky, silvery softness of the unknown caress her neck. She thrust her other hand at it in an attempt to push herself away from the portal. Her second hand sank into the swirl at an alarming speed.

Suddenly, the spinning wind on the outside of the perfect circle began to quicken. The size of the sphere suddenly enlarged and a couple of seconds later, all that was left was a lingering scream as Saiya's feet disappeared through the now rapidly shrinking hole.

The classroom burst into movement. The poor boy that had been knocked over, let out a sudden yelp as his head re-hit the desk. He slumped into pain on the floor. There was a scuffling as people moved their bags away from the desks, to let the teacher through. And in the midst of it, someone voiced a question

"Where's Saiya?"

000

She screamed as she fell through the sky. The forest below was approaching at an alarming speed. Her backpack was falling slowly behind her, as her weight brought her to terminal velocity. Saiya curled into a ball and tried to brace for impact, praying that she not get killed in the process. The next second, there were a series of sickening cracks, as she smashed her way through twenty feet of canopy branches. Then came the larger, more sturdy ones that bounced her off of them with increasing ease and harder thuds each time.

Saiya fell the last ten feet from the branch to the forest floor still curled in her ball. She fell with a crunch into a large prickly bush growing up from the forest floor. Surprisingly she was still conscious. More surprising still, was the fact that nothing seemed broken.

Groaning, she tried to rise from the bush. Her entire front ached from hitting branches and then falling into the thorns.

There was a second set of sickening crunches and a few seconds later, Saiya's backpack fell out of the sky and landed on one of the bushes next to Saiya's, tattered from the branches it caught on the way down. Amazingly, the purse was still clipped to the one remaining shoulder strap, exactly the way she had left it.

Saiya painfully tried to rise, only to be caught by her shirt. She tried to turn sideways. Caught again. She turned her head around to try to find the offending thorns, and nearly fell headfirst into the bush again in shock.

Growing out of her back were wings. The feathers were variations of grey, mostly light, with darker ones scattered through it every once and a while. Some of the lighter ones had silver lines through them in random places.

It was these wings that were keeping her down in the bush, the feathers thoroughly entangled and mangled in the bush. They also clearly explained why her back did not hurt at all from the fall, but there was a bizarre sense of pain emanating from there.

A good bunch of the feathers were broken, cracked at odd angles. One of them was bleeding. 'Great, a blood feather to deal with' she though. Saiya had two birds at home, parakeets, which often had similar problems.

Saiya soon found that if she rustled her wings, the thorns holding them would loosen a little, and after a bit, she was able to stand up.

'The irony of it all.' She thought. 'I fall out of the sky, and only after I hit the ground do I find that I could have avoided all of that'

Groaning, Saiya straightened out and started pulling thorns out of her shirt. Except it was completely ruined. Never mind the thorns, the wings sudden appearance had blown two enormous holes in the back of the shirt so the entire back was in tatters and the front was hanging on by the sleeves on her arms.

Said sleeves were not in the best of shape.

Thank goodness, Saiya was an accident prone maniac who was paranoid enough about life to carry an extra shirt and pair of shorts in her backpack, along with a full medical set in case of emergency.

She limped over to her backpack and ripped open the second largest pocket.

"What the heck?"

In place of her normal amount of stuff. Was a totally now batch of things.

'How to Manipulate Chakra; for Beginners Through Jonin Level? Medical Ninja's Handbook? A History of the Five Great Nations? A Beginners guide to Sealing? Weapon Mastery for the Naturally Clumsy? WHERE ARE MY BOOKS?!'

She shoved the incredibly thick scrolls to the side and grabbed at the stuff beneath. Where her clothes were supposed to be, there was a whole new outfit. A three quarter sleeve blue shirt with light grey stitching down the sides and sleeves. There were two holes in the back edged with light grey that were clearly designed just for her. There were Velcro lined slits up the back as well to make putting it on possible.

There were also dark blue sweat pants and a light blue roll of wide light blue cloth in a bag labeled "leg and arm wrap"

A pair of dark blue fingerless gloves with metal plates on the back lay under the pants. Beyond that, were a pair of ninja style sandals two ribbons (she assumed they were for her hair) on top. There was a long sleeveless trench coat style that was light blue with dark blue trimmings, a high collar and three clips on the top half.

'Alright…this is officially weird' Saiya thought, but she went and changed into all of the clothes anyways, except the coat, which didn't have the necessary wing holes.

Throwing the shredded clothes into her bag along with the scrolls, she proceeded to explore the rest of the bag. Where her homework was supposed to be were a bunch of blank white sheets of paper that seemed very fragile. Then there was a series of papers on different people, which she could only assume, by their pictures, were s-rank criminals.

Saiya sighed with relief when she found her art portfolio still intact in her bag, as well as her pencil case still full of the necessary artistic implements. The remainder of her bag was filled with weapons, blank scrolls and weapons.

She was particularly shocked to find, at the bottom of her bag, a hilt to something. Upon tugging, a full katana around three feet came out. She strapped it to her waist when she found that it wouldn't shove back into the bottom of the bag.

Along with the sword, Saiya armed herself with a dark blue hip pouch full of medical supplies, a leg pouch of shuriken, a second pouch of kunai and a fistful of senbon in the inside pocket of her coat.

As much as she loved to have all these extra weapons though, Saiya had no idea how to use any of them. It took all her effort not to cut her finger open on the edge of the kunai as she loaded them into the pouch. Chances were that if she got into a fight, she would injure herself more than the other person could.

Saiya swung the mangled backpack over one shoulder, by its only remaining strap. It managed to somehow wedge itself on my back next to her wings.

She looked in a circle around her. All there were for miles around were trees. 'Oh great. I'm lost' she thought. And with that, Saiya started to walk, without a general purpose, toward the section of trees that seemed lighter and happier than the rest of them.

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END

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Please Review. Constructive criticism, flames, happy notes, whatever you want.

Thank you for temporarily letting me control your brain. Please move on to the next chapter.


	2. Second Primary

"Speaking"

'Thoughts'

Reviewing is much appreciated. I haven't figured out who I want this story to be about or where it's going to go, so suggestions would be helpful.

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Second Primary

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000Three hours later000

Saiya was still walking. The trees she passed had gone from happy and bright, to dark, gloomy covered in creeping vines. After every tree there seemed to be eyes, and she could swear she heard something behind her every once and a while. She was not the kind of person to be afraid of the shadows, but even still, this was unnerving. But then again, dropping down out of the sky into another plane of dimension is weird enough to make even the most oblivious of people paranoid.

Very few beams of light made it through the canopy, and there had been no clearings at all for her to try to fly her way out of the forest. Not that she wanted to try. There were too many branches and she didn't feel like breaking any more blood feathers than she already had.

There had also been no sight of water, which Saiya desperately needed, as the water pouch that had appeared in her backpack, had been empty.

Getting frustrated, as she felt the prickle of eyes on the back of her neck again, Saiya decided that she had had enough of walking. She stopped and looked around for the tallest tree she could find.

Locating the tree was easy, but trying to climb it was another matter. The lowest branch was ten feet up and covered in thorny vines. Kunai wouldn't stick into the side of the tree due to extensive termite damage, so she couldn't climb it that way.

Hit by inspiration, Saiya jogged over to the nearest beam of light on the floor, and opened her backpack. 'How to Manipulate Chakra; for Beginners through Jonin Level' that was the scroll she took out and undid the seal on.

She skimmed the first few paragraphs, having already known the information from reading the 'Naruto' manga. She got to the section that said 'controlling chakra flow' and sat down in the leaf litter to read it.

After the second time through, Saiya was feeling slightly better on how to manipulate chakra. She had practiced a bit while reading, trying to pick up leaves off the ground by touching her finger to them.

She packed the scroll away and turned back to the tree.

Sticking her foot on it, she tried to adjust her chakra to stick to the tree. It wasn't easy. Saiya wasn't new to the whole 'find your center' thing as she had taken aikido, a type of defensive martial arts, back in her world. However, applying that concept with the 'now draw energy out of your center' idea, was a totally different problem.

The chakra was fizzy and slippery. It was hard to locate, as it kept flaring up and then disappearing when she tried to grasp at it. When she did manage to get it, it felt like trying to turn a wad of jello into syrup and drip it down a straw to pool in the desired location.

Saiya struggled for another fifteen minutes with trying to stick to the tree, and failing miserably. So she decided to try another technique.

She took a stance on the ground by the tree and pumped the chakra into her feet. Saiya jumped upwards, repelling off the chakra she stored there.

Unfortunately, it was a little too effective. Saiya shot twenty feet upward and into the dead, twisted limbs of the trees above. Shrieking, she managed not to bet tangled in them by her wings as she twisted through them on her way down.

She landed softly in a crouched position with the wings open on either side of her. She had used them to lessen the fall. After a quick check to make sure that no more of the feathers had broken, she took her stance again, somewhat pleased that the idea had worked, despite the numerous scratches she had received.

Her second jump was almost successful, except that she soared right over the branch she had been aiming for, and came down in a part of the forest coated in shrubs. She shrugged off the dead twigs and quickly scuttled away from a massive spider nearby before attempting the jump again.

This time she made it onto the branch with no problems.

Placing the edges of her flight feathers on the branch to steady herself, Saiya stood in a crouch and looked for a second accessible branch to jump to. There was one on a tree nearby and she successfully made the jump to this tree. From there, she leapt to two more trees, before she found that the tree she was on had branches close enough for her to climb to the top.

On the last stable branch, Saiya shuffled her way out as far as she dared and looked out at the tops of all the other trees. The forest stretched for miles and miles, without a single break. 'Great. I'm never going to find my way out of here' she thought. But the only way that she was going to survive was to try to find the edge.

'I thought that I would enter by the gates of Konoha, that's where the portal was when I touched it' she mused. But clearly, Konoha was nowhere to be seen.

The tree she was in was a little taller than those directly around it, so Saiya decided that it was time to try out her new wings. If she didn't, there was a fairly good probability that she would be stuck in the forest for a long time.

She flexed the muscles in her back experimentally. They felt hard and smooth, taught enough to lift her into the air with ease. Experimentally, she flapped a couple of times. She could feel the lift the feathers were giving her. She could feel the power that was stored in the muscles, waiting to be let out.

When the branch stopped bouncing up and down, Saiya tried again, a little harder. She could almost lift off with the amount of power that she could put in the wings. Suddenly, impulsively, she gave one enormous thrust with the wings. The branch beneath her shattered at the joint and she shrieked as it's weight brought her down. Releasing the branch, she tried to gain back the altitude she momentarily lost, before she got swallowed by the leaves under her.

Straight takeoff is not the easiest thing for a bird to do. It requires the most amount of muscle and control. Therefore, it follows, that Saiya had a hard time trying to stay steady in the air, beating her wings frantically and searching for a suitable branch to land on.

There was a raucous shout from behind her, and she twisted around quickly to find a crow flapping and screaming eerily at her.

"Crap."

Suddenly there were dozens more crows, all bursting out of the trees, all cawing angrily at her. There was no choice any more. Saiya would have to fly away, and she would have to be fast.

Putting her back to the crows, she tried to gain speed. Harder than it sounds when you start at a standstill and have to maintain the correct altitude at the same time.

Saiya pulled forward with her wings, trying to get away quickly. She was panicking. The crows had decided that they didn't just want to scream, the wanted to peck at her, and they were quickly closing the distance between her and them.

She had gained a little momentum and was accelerating, but the crows were all around her, tugging at the feathers, her hair and her backpack. One of them snapped the strap of her purse off the backpack. It plummeted back down to the ground. Other crows were ganging up on her flight feathers and trying to rip them out.

Saiya was shrieking at the crows, almost as loudly as they were at her. She had more momentum and the birds were loosing their grip on her. Pumping a little chakra into her wings, Saiya gave a hard push, and shot forward like an arrow. The crows, not expecting this, immediately halted their attack and decided that shrieking from a distance was better than chasing after something that could easily outstrip them.

Saiya soared over the treetops wondering what to do next. She turned east, away from the now setting sun, and glided for a few minutes, trying to catch her breath. From her vantage point, she spotted a clearing to her left, in a fairly health part of the forest.

She slowly angled downward and folded her wings over the clearing, dropping roughly onto the ground.

She scanned the clearing, making sure that nothing was going to pop out and try to eat her. Nothing was. It was late in the evening and Saiya decided that this would be an acceptable place to camp out for the night. She climbed up the nearest tree and found a suitable fork in the branches in which to wedge herself.

Saiya opened her backpack and pulled out the rolled blanket that resided on the bottom, along with 'How to Manipulate Chakra; for Beginners through Jonin Level.' She read her way through the scroll until there was not enough light to continue. Then she slept.

000

Saiya woke in the morning and stretched. Her back was itching from leaning against rough bark all night. She reached back to scratch it and did a double take. Her wings weren't there any more!

She looked over her shoulder and tried to feel for them with her chakra, to ensure that they hadn't just become invisible, after all, who knew what would happen next in this insane dimension. As she touched the spots on her back, there was a shimmer and rippling effect and the wings grew/materialized out of her back.

'What the heck.'

Saiya rolled her blanket back up and jumped down into the clearing. She spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out what had happened, but to no avail. The wings would not disappear again. In the end, she settled for preening them.

When that was finished, she decided to brush out her hair, which was coated in bark. Pulling it out of the ponytail that it had been in since yesterday, Saiya got the second shock of the day. Her hair was dark blue in color, with medium blue highlights. Saiya shuffled around in her backpack's more obscure pouches for a few minutes before retrieving the mirror she always carried there.

She studied her reflection for a while. Her hair was mid-back length and varied in shades of blue. Her skin was paler than it had been in her home world, and her facial features were more defined. Her cheek bones were sharper the freckles that had once dotted her cheeks and nose were gone. Her eyes were the most striking though. They had gone from ordinary brown, to light grey boasting dark grey streaks. Overall, Saiya thought it was an improvement.

'Hope that's all the surprises I get today' she thought as she packed stuff back into her bag and wandered into the forest. She was in desperate need for water, and had already finished off the granola bars that she usually kept in her bag.

Ten minutes away fro the clearing, Saiya stumbled across a stream, in which she hastily slurped down all the water she could from. Then she filled her water pouch and stuffed it into her bag. Conveniently, across the stream were several blackberry bushes. She ate as many as she could and wrapped the rest of the ones she could find in a small handkerchief. That, she decided to carry, so that they didn't get squished and leach juice everywhere.

Having fulfilled her bodily needs, Saiya decided to try to find a village. She used chakra to lift off from the clearing and boost her forward toward the east. She flew for hours. Without a hint of civilization anywhere. Eventually she settled in another clearing and set out reading up on jutsus in the later chapters of the chakra scroll.

She spent a few hours practicing the henge, clone and substitution jutsus. Then she polished off the blackberries and went to go find more. Before going to sleep in the fork between branches of another tree.

000

The days proceeded like this until they had transformed into several weeks. Saiya rose each morning, flew for hours over forests, mountains and seemingly endless stretches of water. One day, she spent an entire afternoon over a desert, trying to find her way back to the lush valley she had come out of. The night, she had resolved that she would not travel west anymore.

In the afternoons, when she got sick of watching the landscape pass by, she would find a clearing, study something out of the scrolls, find food, and go to sleep.

Every morning she would wake to find that her wings were not there, and after a while, she developed a theory on why they disappeared. From this, she learned to make them disappear on command. All it took was lack of chakra flow going to her shoulder blades. Then the wings would fizz and shrink back into two tiny blue spots on her black. Saiya assumed that the reason they disappeared at night was because there was so little active chakra flow in her body. But that didn't help her any more with making her wings stay away for long periods of time. They always seemed to materialize again when she let her guard down or had an emotional spike. Like during her frequent one sided shouting matches with the forest.

After the desert incident, she had made what she thought was a grid pattern of searching over hundreds of square miles of forest, and found no sign of life other than rabbits, which she had difficulty hunting, and even more difficulty cooking.

Saiya's only progress came in her study of the scrolls. After three weeks, she had read her way through all five and was re-reading the one on weapons. That was what she was having the most trouble with. Saiya had set up a schedule for herself when she landed. She would do one hundred pushups and sit-ups and the practice with shuriken and kunai for an hour and a half (or at least what seemed to be an hour and a half to her). After that, she would move onto the sword.

Saiya had mastered two simple fire jutsus and would use them to try to roast her catches. She had also found that the blank paper in her backpack was the chakra testing paper. The first time she used it, the paper tried to burn and get soggy at the same time, which resulted in the paper steaming into nothing. After that, she learned to manipulate just one type of chakra at a time so that she could get the paper to burn completely, or get it to become soggy. But she couldn't get two pieces of paper, one in each hand, to do two different things. On rare occasions, she could get a piece of paper to split down the middle into two pieces, but never at will. She supposed that she could count herself lucky to have two useable chakra types before she got angry at herself for being unable to get a hold of her third type, which was rare to have in any case.

The water jutsus from the scroll came easier to Saiya than the fire ones did. She had all four of the ones in the scroll on chakra mastered after week two, but could only perform one of them a good distance from a stream or lake.

Medical jutsus were what Saiya had started on half way through the second week, and they were still a complete mystery to her, even after practically memorizing the scroll on them. She did learn though, the structure of the human body and how the chakra coil system fit into it. She had started memorizing pressure points and trying to remember where the chakra points (I can't remember what they're called) were.

Her leaning had began taking more and more time each day, as she gave up the search earlier and earlier. Saiya had the sinking feeling that she was going in circles, but never had any proof. The forest was absolutely enormous and looked exactly the same on all sides. It was beginning to make her frustrated. She couldn't find any civilization despite her learning how to fly and take care of herself. She was on the verge of trying to wishing herself back home and seeing if the vortex would come back. That was something she thought she would never wanted to do, because she really wanted to meet some of the rookie nine and remain in Konoha forever.

000

"Hokage-sama." Kurenai was standing in front of the third Hokage's desk with a mission report in her hand. "The mission was a success. Target was taken safely to her village. There were no problems"

"Good, good" the Hokage muttered, not really paying attention.

"However, on our way back we found something."

The Hokage looked up. "Really. What is it?"

Kiba walked up to the Hokage's desk and placed a small tattered bag on it. "I've never smelt anything like it before" he said. "There's some weird stuff in it" he pulled out a small plastic bottle. "We have no idea what it is, and the writing is foreign." He pulled out other stuff. Makeup, a mirror, some papers, a wad of money and three small glass bottles of sickly looking liquid and two small scrolls.

The Hokage picked up the makeup, examined the mascara and put the whole pile on the side of his desk. The mirror went their shortly as well as the money. The glass bottles found their way to the other side of the desk with the plastic bottle of thick, unknown, slightly aqua tinted liquid.

He examined the papers next. There was a passport for a ninja of the waterfall village to come to the hidden leaf village. There was a chunin exam form, filled out already and some other notes taken on pieces of paper, that were clearly fighting style and jutsu notes, written in the same foreign hand as what was on the bottle.

The scrolls were last. One was labeled, in Japanese "Hokage" and had the proper striping pattern to signify that it was indeed from the hidden waterfall village. He would open that when he needed to, as it was also striped in yellow, indicating that it was not an immediately pressing problem. The second scroll was a mission description scroll. It stated that the ninja who had held this bag was supposed to be going to the hidden waterfall village, picking up a scroll and two teammates, and then coming to the hidden leaf for the chunin exams. It did not say which village the person was originally from, or who authorized the mission.

The Hokage let out an irritated sigh. 'Great. More problems for me to sort out.' He looked up a Kurenai and her team. "Tomorrow, you will have your next mission. Go to where-ever you found this, and conduct an extensive search for any person or persons in the area. If you find any, bring them back here either way. As a warning, they may not be alive."

Kiba gulped and Hinata shuffled behind Kurenai a little farther.

"This is a C-rank mission. You have as many days as you need to conduct a thorough search of the area. Dismissed." The team turned and left the office.

Sarutobi leaned back in his chair. If indeed there was another team that was supposed to enter the exam, he would have an issue. The first two parts of the exam had finished, as well as the preliminaries. It would be unacceptable to simply add them to the third event, assuming they were still alive, but it would be unfair to test them the same way the others had done, if they did not have the same opportunity to cheat and beat the opponents.

He sighed again. 'Why was my job so complicated?'

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END

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Please Review. Constructive criticism, flames, happy notes, whatever you want.

If there are any grammatical errors, please tell me, I haven't searched out a beta yet so there are bound to be some. I just can't seem to find them. So tell me so I can fix them.


	3. Third Primary

"Speaking"

'Thoughts'

Reviewing is much appreciated. I haven't figured out who I want this story to be about or where it's going to go, so suggestions would be helpful.

OOOXXXOOOXXX

Third Primary

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Saiya was confused. She was almost certain that she had been in this clearing at least once before. This must mean that she was traveling in something that was not a grid pattern and was not a thorough search for people. She groaned in frustration. There was only so much of the forest one could take before going insane. All the clearings looked the same, and different at the same time. For all she knew, this could be a completely different clearing than the one she thought it was, and it could be on the other side of the world.

She desperately needed to find people. She had not been able to change her clothes for three and a half weeks now, or take a proper shower. She was slowly devolving into a monkey. A flying monkey. Like from 'The Wizard of Oz'. Only blue.

She thought of how much better her life would be with even the tiny bottle of hand sanitizer she carried in her purse. Unfortunately she had lost the purse a while a go and had no idea where to even begin searching for it.

Saiya decided to camp out in the clearing again. She threw her backpack off to the tree line and took out the scroll of weapon techniques and began practicing with her sword.

In her world, she had owned a boken – a wooden practice sword – and new the basics of wielding it. She had gotten much better at hacking things with the scroll though. In the clearing, she made a clone, which she was fairly proficient at doing now. She sparred for about an hour with her clone, refining her slicing movements so that they weren't as open as they were before. After that, she started practicing replacement jutsus before her chakra was entirely exhausted and she had to retire to the nearest tree for the night.

Saiya rose with the sun. Seeing that she was still surrounded by trees, her annoyance with the world was rekindled. Some part of her kept expecting to wake up in a nice bed with a hot bath waiting in the next room. Why could she not find any village? 'Well I suppose they're called 'hidden' for a reason' she mused. 'But seriously, this is ridiculous.' She decided that she didn't want to go village hunting today. Maybe, if she stayed on the ground, some random ninja person would come by and find her.

Leaving her wings retracted as they had been overnight, Saiya crawled down the tree and started her practice with shuriken and kunai. She wasn't very good at accuracy, but she could get them in the correct general area, which was a great success for someone who had only held those things for three weeks. She had been able to hunt with the shuriken by throwing a handful of them and hoping that at least one of them would hit the target. Unfortunately, she had given up hunting animals due to her inability to properly cook them last week.

She practiced throwing the kunai at a knot in the tree for several hours. Then, she flopped down on her back in the grassy center of the clearing and watched the clouds go by. It was so calming, to know that if she wanted, she could go up there and flit in and out of the fluffy objects.

The hours ran by with her watching the wind shift directions, first from north to south, then west to east, and then to somewhere in between. The clouds had started in small clumps, but the ones later in the day were larger, deeper, and greyer. The wind would blow them continuously, shifting them easily from one form to another in a second. Saiya watched how the light illuminated different parts of the clouds every second in ways she never imagined possible. It was hypnotic.

Saiya was so into her cloud induced meditation state that she didn't even hear them come into the clearing. They were at her feet before she heard them stepping on the dry grass.

"Hey. You alive?" one of the newcomers asked.

Saiya slowly blinked her way out of her dream state. She propped herself up on her elbows and stared at the four people. Later, she would suppose that it was the cloud state she had gotten into in the center of the clearing was what had stopped her from pouncing on Kiba then and there and hugging him to death from the sheer excitement of not only seeing another human being, but a human being that was one of the many she so desperately wanted to meet.

She remained calm as she regarded the newcomers to the clearing. "Oh. Hi. Wow. I didn't expect my theory to work so quickly. Drat. If I'd known that, I would have wandered in circles down her the entire time." She thought for a second. "I'm Kawanami Saiya by the way. And I already know who you are. You're Kiba, you're Shino, you're Hinata, and you're Kurenai." She pointed to each of them in turn. "Nice to meet you all."

Kiba just stared at her. "Wait a second. How do you know that?"

"Because I'm special." Saiya answered. Then she flopped back down onto the grass to get lost in the clouds again.

"Um. Well, are you going to come with us?" Kiba pestered.

It took a few seconds for her mind to register what they were asking. "To the hidden leaf village?"

"Yeah."

She rose off the ground instantly and sprinted to the edge of the clearing. She grabbed her backpack and was back to them in an instant. "Which way is it? I've been looking for signs of civilization for three and a half weeks and I couldn't find any."

"Umm. South. Right over next set of hills. You can't miss it." Kiba said.

Saiya stared at him dumbfounded. 'Just over the next set of hills? Arg! How could I have missed it this entire time?!' she was sorely tempted to fly up out of the clearing and see if he was right, but decided against it, for fear of creeping out Kiba even more.

Kurenai pulled something out of her pack "is this yours? We found it stuck on a tree branch about five miles from here." She held out Saiya's purse.

"Yeah! It is! I thought I lost!" Kurenai handed it to her and Saiya tied the broken ends of the strap onto her backpack strap, where it was before.

"One last question. Were you traveling with anyone? Should we be looking for more people besides you?"

Saiya shook her head vigorously. "I was traveling alone."

"Alright then. Let's go." Kurenai said. And they walked back toward Konoha.

000

"Come in" the Hokage called. Five people entered the room. He looked up from the mound of paperwork in front of him and was mildly surprised. He had not expected such a speedy return from Kurenai's team. But he had expected that when they did come back, there would be three people. Instead, there was only one blue haired girl, about sixteen years old.

"You must be Kawanami Saiya." Please come here.

Saiya stepped forward looking a bit shocked. "How did you know my name?"

Kiba made a weird face and muttered, "You say that, but you knew all our names"

Saiya smiled. "I'm special. Remember that." She said to him. "But seriously, how did you know my name?"

"I have your chunin exam entrance card and your village passport here. They were found in your purse. What happened to your team? You were scheduled to arrive three weeks ago for the start of the chunin exams."

"I got lost. But I have no idea what team you're talking about. I was traveling alone. Was I really entered for the chunin exams?"

The last comment earned her several mildly confused looks from at least two people in the room.

"Your mission report says that you were supposed to get this scroll" he held up the scroll that was addressed to him "from the waterfall village and then come here with two waterfall genin so that you could test together."

"It does? I didn't know that"

"How could you not know what the mission was if you were half finished with it already?" spouted off Kiba.

"I dunno" Saiya answered. 'How could I tell him that my backpack materializes stuff for me and that I come from a completely different dimension?'

Kiba gave her a 'that's ridiculous' look. But Saiya just shrugged.

"Kurenai, your team may go. Tell the secretary at the front desk that you finished the mission. She knows how much to give you. She also as a list of D-rank missions you can pick from if you want to"

"Hai Hokage-sama" they answered in unison. They proceeded out of the room, closing the door behind them.

And it was at this random moment, which it really occurred to Saiya that she really was in Naruto's world. 'OMG. It's real. I'm not hallucinating. I'm in the Hokage's office. That really was Kiba, Shino, Hinata and Kurenai. Holy crap. I wonder if I can be a ninja. Where are they in the story? Could I learn some super cool jutsu? Do I have a kekkai genkai? Oh wait; I have wings, that's it. This is real. Holy crap. I really meet the characters!' then she realized that she was hyperventilating. 'Breathe! Breathe! Calm down…take it slowly. Good, now, try not to be crazy'

Saiya turned back to the Hokage, who was watching her spasm with increasing incredulity. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"Yeah. I think I'll be fine," the blue haired girl said, a bit breathlessly.

"You're looking a bit pale."

"Really?"

"I'll have someone escort you to the hospital. Come back tomorrow. I have some questions for you." He called for an ANBU, who popped up out of nowhere, took hold of her shoulder and steered her out of the office.

000

The hospital room was entirely white. It was beginning to freak Saiya out. Monochromatic things were freaky to her. She was weird like that. The diagnosis by the nurse said that she was simply tired and a bit dehydrated. They nurses were more worried about her mental health, because the Hokage said that she might have had minor memory loss, but they didn't tell her that. They gave her a lot of water and told her to sleep before the closed the door and cut off all the sound entering the room.

Saiya was having a difficult time holding her wings back under the glare of the white ceiling and the white walls. She shivered and rolled over in the bed, trying to curl under the blanket. The thin sheet and the thinner hospital clothes were not protecting her against the cold breeze coming in from the window. The voices from outside the room were always there, just muffled and low. Saiya didn't like it. This was a hospital of secrets and a hospital of death.

Even through the sheets, she could feel the white closing in on her. The white that was blinding, keeping so many secrets behind its pure outer surface, while slowly destroying the barrier that let someone hide their own secrets. The walls were slowly encroaching. The adjacent bed had somehow vanished from Saiya's mind sight. It was just four walls, a pure, blinding cube, staring back at her without any eyes, and with so many eyes, all at once.

Saiya curled tighter, hugging her knees to her chin and trying to block out her horrible mental picture and failing. Suddenly, she couldn't take it. She threw off the sheet and dashed to the door, before it too vanished into the white. She yanked it open and skidded down the hall. Turning the corner, she ran straight into someone's green vest.

She fell backward onto the floor, but was up in an instant and attempting to duck around the man to get to the staircase. By now, there was adrenaline pumping madly through her veins, supplying her brain with frantic calls for escape, even though the white room was behind her. No, she needed to get out of the hospital altogether.

A large arm blocked her path. "Easy now. Are you supposed to be out of bed?" Said a muffled voice.

Saiya couldn't take it anymore. The wings that she had somehow managed to suppress all day, sprang from her back, tore through the flimsy hospital clothing and accidentally smashed into someone who was behind her in the hallway. But Saiya didn't care. She forced the chakra into them, something easy for her now.

She almost flew down the hall. The corridor wasn't wide enough for her to spread her wings more than half way, but it was good enough to push her way past the arm and get her to the other end before he could recover from the shock.

She jumped down the stairs, pulling her feet up so to miss the two nurses who were on their way up. They shrieked any way and nearly dropped the lunch trays they were carrying as Saiya glided quickly over their heads.

At the bottom of the stairs, Saiya twisted to place her feet on the wall and jumped off, managing to turn the corner without touching the floor. She speed past the reception desk and out the double doors which were conveniently being held open by a man, for his wife and child. Thankfully, they all had the sense to duck.

The adrenaline of the escape from the white room wore off as soon as she stepped into the street. Her knees were shaking and she needed something to lean against. Saiya wandered over to a bench against the building and nearly collapsed completely on it. People on the street were turning and staring at her, gawking for a few minutes before they were hurried along by their daily lives. Little children were the least reluctant to move, lagging behind and pointing while they could.

A second after sat down, the man with the green vest shot out of the building and quickly looked around for her. It was almost funny to see his reaction to seeing the blue haired girl sitting breathless on the hospital bench. He had probably expected to have to give chase, or to see her flying away, too high for him to reach.

Saiya noticed him immediately and gawked. He quickly walked over. She started having difficulty controlling her breathing. And this time, it wasn't because of the running.

"Kakashi" she muttered faintly.

He stopped a few feet in front of her and asked, "You know me?"

Saiya attempted a weak laugh "I'm special like that."

Kakashi raised his one visible eyebrow. "Ok then. What would you be doing running…" he glanced at her wings. "Flying, out of the hospital"

She chuckled guiltily. "I can't stand the white. Drove me crazy. Had to get out."

Kakashi's eyebrow indicated that he understood. "Well, you just caused a lot of problems for the staff"

Saiya just stared blankly.

"You nearly ran over two of them, and hit a third in the face."

"Oh" she said faintly.

"Oh?" he repeated. "You have to go back in there now. You'll have to apologize for nearly giving them heart attacks"

She shook her head hastily "don't want to go back"

"You need to."

"No" she said a little more firmly. "It's too white. You can't make me"

Kakashi raised his eye, clearly challenging this comment.

"It's all right," said a voice from behind him. Kakashi turned and the third Hokage came into view. "I was watching," he said in answer to Kakashi's slightly puzzled look. "She can come with me. Clearly an entire night in the hospital would be detrimental to may people's health. I have questions anyway."

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END

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Please Review. Constructive criticism, flames, happy notes, whatever you want.

If there are any grammatical errors, please tell me, I haven't searched out a beta yet so there are bound to be some. I just can't seem to find them. So tell me so I can fix them.


	4. Fourth Primary

"Speaking"

'Thoughts'

Reviewing is much appreciated. I haven't figured out who I want this story to be about or where it's going to go, so suggestions would be helpful.

Sunstar Hiroshi – I really have no idea what's going on with my story. It just builds itself every time I try to write it. The entire thing is one big spontaneous headache. So I can't fully answer that question. I think for now, she's going to be a completely new character, but I've no idea.

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Fourth Primary

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Saiya had followed the Hokage, in a slight state of shock, to his office and tried to ignore the stares of the villagers as she went by. It was odd enough for them to see a blue haired girl wandering down the streets in hospital clothes. It was odder still to see that those clothes were torn to shreds at the back and there were two large, silver grey wings protruding from the wreckage of the fabric.

Half way to the office, Sarutobi noticed why people were staring, and he signaled one of the guards ANBU who always followed him around on rooftops. People on the street watched as he whispered something in his ear of his wolverine mask and the ANBU ran off.

Saiya on the other hand, didn't even register that the Hokage was talking to anyone. All she realized was, 'I'm really not hallucinating. There are ANBU members too. That's so cool! And the Hokage's just as nice as he seemed in the anime. I still can't believe I'm actually here.' She examined her hand, and fidgeted her wings to make sure that both she and they were still there and that half of her hadn't disappeared when she realized that her hallucination was not a hallucination.

When they eventually reached the base of the tower that the Hokage worked in, the third turned to Saiya. "I'm feeling too old to take the stairs today. We'll jump." And with a crinkled smile, he leapt up to the balcony on the side of the building. Saiya followed his example, charging her feet with chakra, kicking off and when the momentum ran out half way up, she boosted herself the rest of the way with a single chakra infused wing stroke.

She landed on the railing next to the Hokage and he smiled to see that she had made it. They went inside and found the ANBU to already be there, carrying Saiya's recently freshly laundered clothes, sword and backpack. How they managed to wash, dry and fold the clothes in the span of roughly thirty minutes that she had been in the hospital was a mystery to her, but then again, they were ninjas.

"The bathroom's the first door on your right when you take a left," the Hokage said, pointing to the door that any normal person would have taken to get into the office.

Saiya nodded and took her stuff from the ANBU, who promptly disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Then she ran out of the door to change.

Ten minutes later, she was back in the office, with her hair brushed out and her face washed. Those two things made Saiya look much healthier than she had when she had just arrived in Konoha, better even then she had looked after she had been attended by the hospital staff.

The Hokage motioned for her to come up to the other side of the desk at which he sat. Then he pulled out the four bottles and the scrap paper that he had kept from her purse and set them on the table. "These were all found in your handbag when it was recovered from the forest. Would you care to explain them?"

Saiya looked at the stuff. "Well," she began, "this is hand sanitizer." And she picked up the plastic bottle that Kiba and the Hokage had been so interested in. "These three" she gestured to the other three bottles, "Look rather nasty, so I'd guess they are poison," she stated. The Hokage just nodded, as that was obvious. "And these," she picked up the papers and leafed through them, "are notes. I think."

"About what?"

"Well, what scrolls I should be reading, my training schedule, my calendar for the next few months and who I should seek out as a sensei and stuff like that." She said as she shuffled the cards one by one.

"What language are they in?"

"English, duh" Saiya said. And then she did her classic double take. "Wait. You can't read this. This is English. But you can understand me. Which logically means that I am speaking something other than English." She looked rather shocked. "I've been speaking and reading Japanese this entire time and haven't noticed it," she said in awe.

The Hokage was giving her the look that many others had already given. He was clearly thinking what all the others had thought as well. 'Is she alright? Did she hit her head on a tree or something?' It may not have been exactly that, but it was definitely something along those very broad lines.

The Hokage seemed to get over his shock faster than the others did though, and moved on to the next question. "Would you care to explain how you got here?"

Saiya looked at him a little weirdly. 'Now that I think to listen for it, I can tell its Japanese' she thought 'wow.'

The Hokage cleared his throat when he saw that Saiya had not paid him any attention. "Please explain how you got here," he repeated.

"Oh." Saiya muttered, having figured out that he was actually waiting for a response. "Umm…" she hadn't actually come up with a logical excuse for why she was there. And she really wasn't good at making stuff up on the spot, lying and getting away with it. In fact, she was an absolutely horrible liar. 'Considering that, I could just tell him the truth… he'll probably take the secret to the grave with him anyways, since he's going to go soon now, and not many people would believe…wait…lots of people would believe him if he said I came form another dimension. Hmmm…'

"You're trying to come up with a cover story. I can tell." The third said, without removing his gaze once from Saiya's increasingly fidgety form. "Why don't you just tell me the truth?"

"Cause the truth is difficult to believe. Even for me." Saiya answered, not meeting the Hokage's gaze. She was trying to avoid it so that she wouldn't get sucked in and end up spilling everything like she knew she would in a minute anyways.

"Really?" asked the Hokage, "try me."

Saiya fidgeted around. Trying to keep her eyes away from his long enough for inspiration to strike.

"Kawanami-san, please look at me." Saiya avoided his eyes and let her eyes wander the edge of his Hokage hat.

"Saiya-san" he said in a slightly exasperated voice.

Saiya looked. And everything spilled. "I'm from another dimension. I was just sitting in school and then there was a vortex thing and it brought me here, and my backpack started giving me stuff and I had wings and then I got lost and then Kiba and Hinata found me, oh and Kurenai and Shino too, and I hate hospitals cause I can't stand the white and I know who everyone is cause I watch the show and I know what's going to happen and all that crap and I don't know what to do, can I please enter the chunin exams, please?"

The Hokage looked both shocked and mildly impressed that she had managed to spout off that much info in a few short breaths, and thoroughly confused at what was said. "Would you care to explain that again, in more detail, without rushing?"

Saiya took a huge breath and said, "I come from another world, where this world is only a cartoon and a book series, so I know a lot of what is going to happen and a lot of what already happened." She stopped and took a breath. "But I was in the middle of my history class and I closed my eyes, cause it was boring and all, and then there was this weird vortex thingy that showed up and I touched it and all of a sudden I was here." Pause. "And then I found all this weird stuff in my backpack that I'd never had before, like that poison, and my sword, and this outfit and a bunch of scrolls." Pause again. "But I got lost in the woods and I couldn't find any village and I lost my purse to a bunch of crows, and I don't have a team like that scroll said, because I've never been here before." Third pause. "And then Kurenai's team came and found me and I came here, but I don't like hospitals so I ran out and nearly trampled some nurses and Kakashi." She let out a deep breath. "But I really, really, really want to be a chunin."

Saiya looked like she was done with the general overview and ready to start spouting more nonsense at him, so Sarutobi put up a hand and Saiya shut her already opening mouth. "Alright. Your telling me, that you come from another dimension." A nod. "And that you know both this villages future and past" more nodding. "And the reason you don't know what your mission was, was because you were never on it because your backpack made it up?" vigorous nodding. "But you would like to join the chunin exams anyways." Saiya was practically ready to dent the floor with all because of all the bouncing she was doing after that statement.

"Alright. I'm going to have to think over this one. I've never had a case like this before." The Hokage was rifling through the papers on his desk, searching for something. "Kami, this job gets more and more aggravating each year," he muttered as he started rifling through the drawers.

Eventually he pulled out a coin of some sort, a ribbon and a blank scroll. He immediately started writing in hurried, yet elegant kanji that Saiya couldn't read upside-down. When he was done, he rolled up the scroll, tied the medallion to the scroll with the ribbon and called for an ANBU. He gave the scroll to the ANBU with a quick word and he disappeared in a flash.

Saiya shifted uncomfortably as Sarutobi started rifling through his drawers again. He pulled out a small pouch not long after and handed it over the desk to Saiya's uncertain hand.

"This will get you whatever you need for a few weeks, in addition to what's already; in your handbag, until I can decide what to do with you." He said. Saiya felt the pouch. It was obviously full of coins. The Hokage quickly swept the four bottles and the papers into her hands as well. "You may want these as well," he said.

The ANBU reappeared and motioned for Saiya to follow him. Then he walked to the balcony. The Hokage nodded in his direction when Saiya looked unsure of what to do. "He's going to take you to my private house. I have many spare rooms. The housekeeper will make sure you have everything you need. You are free to go around the village as you please, but don't make Yamadori worry to much. I give her enough grief already," the Hokage said, with another of his crinkled smiles.

Saiya nodded in thanks and trotted over to the balcony. "I jump, you fly" the ANBU said to her, in a deep voice. Then he jumped off the balcony and landed on the rooftops several houses away.

Saiya jumped too and beat her wings so that she and the ANBU were going the same speed, towards the edge of the town under the first Hokage's watchful stone eyes, and with the eyes of the third following them.

The flight was one of the most enjoyable ones that Saiya had ever had. Before, there was nothing but repetitive lines of trees below her, occasionally sand, or water, but now, there was stuff to watch as she went by. There was a purpose to flying, to keep pace with the man in front of her. There was bright light as the sun beat overhead, and beautiful, weaving streets dotted with people, like ants raiding stalks of grain that had fallen before a child's careless step.

She could actually enjoy the sense that the wind was giving her, over the top of her wings, ruffling the cover feathers and then flowing down under the flight feathers. She could feel the way that they would grow taught, and then curve back when she lifted the wings again. The muscles that had grown in her back along with the wings appearance were taught and cried in happiness of being stretched, of feeling the sun and the wind.

She watched as the stray strands of blue hair fluttered past her vision and came in front of the village scene. It was almost like an old black and white film, where you can tell the difference in each of the frames because the black flashed past.

Saiya was so involved in the sight of the village that she almost missed the fact that the ANBU had stopped on a large red tiled roof, watching her. Almost.

She fluttered down to land next to him and he jumped off the roof into the front yard, Saiya right behind him. He knocked on the door and waited patiently as there was a scuffling noise was heard from the other side.

Saiya quickly retracted her wings, so as to not scare the housekeeper as Sarutobi had requested. Seconds later, the door burst open and a little kid in yellow with brown hair sticking out of his hat stopped short in the act of bolting out the door to glomp whoever was on the other side.

He straightened up and looked up the two feet or so between his height and Saiya's. She turned to see why he was not looking at the ANBU, only to find that he was not there anymore. She turned to find him, but her attention was drawn back to Konohamaru when he spouted out, "Who are you lady?"

A rather large lady with reddish brown hair and a broom came up behind the child and bopped him lightly on the head. "You know better than to be rude to guests," she scolded before shuffling the boy back inside. "I'm Yamadori, I'm the housekeeper here. You must be Kawanami Saiya. The third sent a letter ahead. You're to stay in one of the empty rooms here. But I trust you know that already. Come in, come in, make yourself at home."

Saiya stepped over the threshold and noticed Konohamaru's head disappear around the corner quickly.

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END

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Please Review. Constructive criticism, flames, happy notes, whatever you want.

If there are any grammatical errors, please tell me, I haven't searched out a beta yet so there are bound to be some. I just can't seem to find them. So tell me so I can fix them.


	5. Fifth Primary

"Speaking"

'Thoughts'

Reviewing is much appreciated.

Leilani22 – you're my new favorite person.

OOOXXXOOOXXX

Fifth Primary

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The tour of the Hokage's estate took about half an hour, which included Yamadori's rant to the kitchen staff after they had somehow managed to burn her tea.

Saiya thought that the Hokage's house was the perfect definition of a comfortable home. It wasn't huge and empty, but it wasn't small and stuffed full of unnecessary object either. It was made of a front section and two wings that bordered a courtyard which opened into a field and a small section of woods. There were clean white walls and neat garden paths lined in flowers. Inside, inside, the halls were sparkling and the rooms furnished with inviting and squishy armchairs. Each room had its own feel to it, so that it didn't seem like a house that nobody occupied.

The house staff was nice too. There were two cooks, two maids and the housekeeper Yamadori, who watched over them and Konohamaru when Ebisu was off being the pervert he was. There were also occupants in the east wing of the house that Saiya didn't meet.

Saiya's temporary room was on the west wing of the house. It had a large soft bed, mahogany dresser, large closet; though not walk in, two squishy chairs and another table. There was also a row of bookshelves stuffed with nonfiction works and an entire encyclopedia set, all in Japanese. (She was still in shock over that.) One wall was entirely windows facing in on the courtyard garden and training arena,

Saiya dumped her tattered backpack on the bed and looked around the room. It reminded her of a hotel room, only a little better furnished. Her backpack looked out of place, grass stained and ripped in so many places that it was a miracle that nothing had fallen out already.

The closet doors were staring at her blankly, wondering why she wasn't putting stuff in them. Saiya realized that she would have to get changes of clothes, as her backpack had only given her one set. Thinking of which, she had to get a new one of those too, because her left shoulder was really sore from being the only one to carry the weight of the pack. Not to mention the holes in all the sides.

Yamadori had expressly stated that dinner would be held at seven thirty. There were still two hours before she was due in the dining room. That was enough time to find and buy a new backpack if she hurried.

Saiya took the purse off the strap of her backpack and grabbed small pouch of coins the Hokage had given her. She emptied her purse and the pouch into the side of her kunai pouch, resting on her hip. Then she darted out the door.

Outside of the house, and around the corner, Saiya let her wings come back out, much to the shock of those around her. It was becoming annoying to keep them in. They had started to itch and attract sporadic chakra bursts.

She jogged down the street, trying to find a ninja supply shop, but unfortunately, Konoha was a very large village and Saiya seemed to be stuck in the residential portion. Frustrated at her wasted time, she jumped onto the roof and fluttered over the next street peering around to see if they were shops. They weren't. So she jumped to the next street, and the next, and the one after that.

The fifth street she hovered over showed some promise, mainly because there were more people and one very famous ramen bar. She hovered looking around, beating the wings every few seconds and stirring up much of the dust on the street. The blue haired girl finally found what she was looking for, a few seconds later. It never fails. If you want to find a shinobi, go to Ichiraku ramen. Naruto's bound to be there.

At the moment Saiya was looking, he was hurrying down the street with a white haired man close behind. His destination was right before Saiya.

However oblivious Naruto may have been to the fact that there was a girl with blue hair flying above the street, Jiraiya, who was following behind was not. He paused momentarily in the street watching her, before proceeding with more caution through the staring crowd.

He entered the circle below her that none of the pedestrians on the street seemed to want to enter, due to the immense amount of dust blown up every other second. Saiya, who knew exactly who he was, folded her wings and landed in front of him, straightening up.

"Hey," she said, hoping to get directions to a shinobi clothes store before he realized how much she knew about him and before he realized she wasn't a ninja.

Unfortunately, those were not the first things she would have to worry about with Jiraiya. He had started thinking about his 'research.' Fortunately, it was Naruto to the rescue. "Ero-sennin! Get over here!" he called from the ramen stand. "You promised to pay for this!"

"Can't you wait? I'm talking to the young lady over here!" he yelled back.

"Actually, you weren't talking to me, you were staring at me. That hardly qualifies as a conversation. Ero-sennin." They heard Naruto cackling in the background.

"Well, my name's not actually Ero-sennin. I'm..."

"I know who you are. Jiraiya, one of the three legendary sannin, toad hermit, student of the third Hokage, Naruto's sensei and author of that perverted Make-Out series, she said with a crooked smile.

Jiraiya looked momentarily stunned, but then broke out in a grin. "See Naruto, I'm famous, everyone knows me." Naruto was silent and Jiraiya took that as he had won the perpetual disagreement.

"Now, back to why I landed here," Saiya said, drawing Jiraiya's attention to her again. "I was wondering if you knew any good supply stores for shinobi. I just got here and I need a new bag. Mine got ripped up on the way here."

Jiraiya pondered for a minute "I'm not a resident of this village most of the time. I travel a lot, so I don't know where everything is, but I bet my student knows." He nodded his head in Naruto's direction and they both walked over, Saiya trailing slightly behind, and repeated the question to him.

Naruto looked up from his fourth bowl of noodles and nodded. Slurping the rest of it down, he said "there's a really good store two streets over, I'll show you. Hang on a second." He downed the rest of his bowl in a couple of swift chopstick movements and looked up expectantly at Jiraiya, who reluctantly put the money on the counter.

They walked down the street, took a left, and then a right, and another two lefts with Jiraiya watching the girl the entire time, though she only had a vague suspicion of what he was doing. The street they ended up on was almost entirely made up of glass windows, clothes and other objects in every one. People flocked the street, and they would have made it difficult to see, if they didn't part unconsciously part way for the imposing structure of Jiraiya, and the silver-grey winged girl with blue hair.

Naruto walked a couple of blocks on this street before leading them into a supply shop advertising durable, comfortable, lightweight shinobi attire and tools. The bell on the door jingled as they entered, and the man at the counter greeted Naruto casually. Evidently, he was a regular customer here.

Saiya grinned and started her search for the perfect backpack, wandering down the isles of supplies quickly until she found two that were full of packs of different sizes. The next half an hour was spent deciding which of two that she liked was better. Jiraiya and Naruto stayed to help out in the selection process, arguing over which was their favorite as well.

In the end, though, Saiya chose a completely different pack, with only one diagonal strap, so that she could wear it over her shoulder and it would be situated between her wings when she wanted to fly. She took it for a test flight before buying it and it fit perfectly. Jiraiya and Naruto were about ready to leave at that point, and stood half way down the street, watching her as she did a few loops and dives.

Saiya flew home with her new bag, with only twenty minutes to spare before Yamadori's promised dinner. She ran to the bedroom and threw it on her bed and began fixing up her blue hair again, since it had fallen out of the ponytail in the flight. She was still uncomfortable with it being as long as it was. Her hair had only come down to her shoulders in the normal world, and had not been near as neat, straight, and silky as it was now. It would take some more time getting used to, because three weeks definitely wasn't enough for Saiya. She was the kind of person who liked change either to be seen from a mile off, or to come at her slowly, preferably both, but unfortunately, neither of which had happened. She sighed and stopped playing with it, washed her hands and face, and then went to find the dining room.

Dinner was a four person meal, because the mystery residents of the east wing were going out for dinner. Konohamaru and Ebisu spent the entire meal talking about how Naruto was influencing the boy, with Konohamaru insisting that Naruto was a better ninja than his teacher would ever be, and Ebisu firmly trying to get the fact that he would never be Hokage if he hung around Naruto, shoved into the boy's brain. They completely ignored Saiya, and Yamadori, who had taken the fourth seat. Sarutobi had originally intended to be there, but unable to make it due to an unplanned council meeting.

The food was wonderful and the atmosphere light, so the evening passed quickly. The two women passed most of the time listening to the two males argue and laughing between themselves at how stupid they were being.

At eight thirty, Yamadori made them all leave the table so she could help the kitchen staff clean up. Saiya went to her room, transferred all of the materials from her old backpack, into her new one, hung it on a hook in the closet, and went to bed early.

000

The next day had come with rain, which put a damper on all of the training that Saiya had planed on doing out in the courtyard. Instead, she spent the first few hours doing unknown numbers of push-ups, sit-ups, squats, lunges and other drills. Then she tried to get a practice dummy from the outside so that she could practice sword slicing in her room. Unfortunately, Yamadori stood in the way of that idea.

"That's why there's such a big practice field out there," she told the slightly irritated girl, after she got sick of all the poking and prodding she had received in the cause of the practice dummy. "So you don't have to bring the things inside."

"But it's raining! I can't practice out in the rain,"

"Shinobi have to work in the rain all the time, so why can't you?"

"Because I'm not a shinobi yet, therefore, I shouldn't have to put up with that kind of thing yet."

"But you want to take the test to be a chunin, so therefore you have to be a genin, so you're a ninja, and you should be able to train in the rain." The housekeeper had seemed very pleased to have found this loop in Saiya's plan.

"True, but I don't want to get sick. When I'm cold and wet, I get sick," Saiya persisted. "So I should bring the dummy inside to train."

"No. I know you're planning to use that sword of yours and there will be no wielding of that, or any other sharp object for that matter, in this house. Not while I'm in charge."

"But this is the Hokage's house, he's a ninja, and he must use sharp objects inside sometimes," Saiya said desperately.

"He most certainly does not. He takes all his weapons outside, as you should. Now stop bugging me, I have to make sure the cooks aren't trying to practice aim with their knives again." And with that she left, leaving a very disgruntled Saiya behind.

She muttered as she walked down the hall back to her room. Half an hour later, she emerged, wings still retracted, with her large trench coat like jacket on and her remaining money in her kunai pouch. It was still only ten in the morning, and still drizzling, but Saiya wanted to get out of the house.

She made a beeline for the door, with the intention of finding the road she had been on yesterday and go clothes shopping. Unfortunately, Yamadori saw her trying to leave.

"Just where do you think you're going?" she asked sternly.

"Out, didn't you just tell me that ninja's can take a little rain?" Saiya said, with an innocent smile that masked thoughts from her slightly highly annoyed mind.

"Yes, but you aren't going out to train, even I can see that. The courtyard door is on the other side of the house, and you know it. And you haven't got that accursed sword either. You're going out to town, which means wandering around for absolutely no reason in this weather. And then you'd track all of the mud back in here, and I'm not going to hear of it. You're staying inside unless there's something important you've got to do in the village, or you're training." The housekeeper stared at Saiya waiting for an answer.

"I have to get some clothes, I haven't got any spares" Saiya said simply, hoping that she would be allowed to leave.

"Well then you can borrow some of the maid's clothing if you need it that badly. You're staying in until the rain stops, unless it's for ninja purposes, which for you, is only training." There was a note of doomed finality in the housekeeper's voice. So Saiya mumbled something incoherent and went to spend the following four hours in her room waiting out the storm.

OOOXXXOOOXXX

END

OOOXXXOOOXXX

Please Review. Constructive criticism, flames, happy notes, whatever you want.


	6. Sixth Primary

"Speaking"

'Thoughts'

Reviewing is much appreciated.

OOOXXXOOOXXX

Sixth Primary

OOOXXXOOOXXX

At three in the afternoon, the clouds had cleared and the roads were drying. Saiya figured that it was perfectly acceptable for her to leave the house now, and she threw her money bag back in the kunai pouch. She stalked moodily back to the front door of the house. The girl still wasn't over the fact that she had been denied the right to exit the house that morning.

True, the four hours had been useful time in which to study the scrolls again and practice a bit with the chakra points, locating them on her arms and such, but she had really wanted to chop something up.

Yamadori caught her eye from one of the rooms she was cleaning as Saiya passed. But the housekeeper let her keep going, and Saiya left the house without another argument.

Out of the house, she once again let her wings appear and flew straight over the tops of the other houses to the store from the previous day. Thankfully, she had thought to remember where it was located.

She landed in front of the supply shop, to the shock of the family exiting it at the time, and wandered down the street until she found something that looked like ninja style clothing on display in a window. She went inside the shop and looked around. There were rows upon rows of clothing in every color imaginable. There were sections for girls' clothes, a section for boys and a section of stuff that could be either. Weapon sets were on display behind the checkout counter. Gloves and accessories were off in a corner and shoes in the very back. Saiya just stood in awe. Shopping in a store like this was any Naruto fanatic's dream.

She wandered off into the isles of clothing giddily, picking up anything that was blue, grey or black that looked her size. Shirts, skirts, robes, jackets, sweatshirts, sweatpants, shorts, tank tops, workout clothes, socks, underclothes and such all went into her arms, piling high very quickly.

She roamed around for a few minutes more trying to find the fitting rooms, until one of the other customers pointed her towards the obscure doors behind the rows of cloaks.

An hour and a half later, Saiya had chosen all the clothes she wanted, most of which were similar to what she already had. The shirts of course, would have to be modified, but they fit when she retracted the wings. She had four more pairs of pants, two dark blue, one dark grey one, and one black one. Two short sleeve shirts, one blue, and one black. Three three-quarter sleeve shirts, one light blue, one a medium shade, one grey. One light blue sleeveless shirt with a high collar. Two more packages of arm and leg wraps, one blue one light grey. A second pair of sandals and a second pair of black fingerless gloves. A whole set of underclothes, a bag of hair-ties, a dark grey sweatshirt, which would have to be creatively modified, and a high collared light grey cloak with a mini cloak-cape-thing on top, under which Saiya would be able to cut the appropriate holes.

The mound was an impressive bunch to have picked out in that short an amount of time and it was almost too much to fit in her arms, and definitely too much to push over the counter for the manager to total. Saiya began wondering if she would have enough money.

Just then, she noticed Jiraiya and Naruto off to the side of the store. They were examining a set of spikes that were supposed to fit on the bottom of ninja sandals, but both guys stopped what they were doing when Saiya called a greeting. Naruto peered around behind Saiya for something.

"Hey, where'd they go?" he asked.

"Where did what go" Saiya responded, somewhat confused as to what he was looking for

"Your wings. They were there yesterday, but now they're not, where'd they go?" Naruto asked. The shop keeper looked up from his tallying of the clothes, evidently curious.

Saiya realized that she had never brought her wings in, in front of Naruto or Jiraiya yesterday, she had only folded them against her back. It was an amusing thought. What it she did have to keep the wings out all the time. That would suck, she would be perpetually stared at, not to mention, clothes modification would be much more significant, and she would have to deal with injuries and not being as thin sideways as a normal shinobi. She'd have to guard her back so that she wouldn't get all the feathers chopped off and be useless for four months or so. Saiya concluded that she was very glad that they retracted.

She let her wings out, much to the shock of the cashier, as they were facing him and he had obviously been listening in to the whole conversation, and had clearly thought that the three of them were lying or in on some joke thing.

The boy's face was an abstract portrait of colors when he saw them. First, there was observation and realization, followed closely by shock, and then awe. After that, Naruto managed to have more shock, and curiosity, and a bout of stuttering meaningless phrases and quick glances at Jiraiya to convey his shock, though they entirely unnecessary. The cashier seemed to be in a similar state, though he had more cause to look shocked, as he had never seen them before. Jiraiya also looked somewhat surprised, though he wasn't going to show it so obviously.

The boy eventually calmed down – by which is meant, was reduced to sporadic shouts of "that's so cool," "they come in and out whenever you want" and "you're amazing" in the loudest voice possible - and Saiya's wings retracted back into her spots as she turned back to the pile of clothes waiting to be rung up. The shopkeeper still seemed a bit in shock and he kept folding and unfolding a shirt compulsively, so Jiraiya started folding the clothes that had already been tallied, and adding numbers to the list of purchases, as the man on the other side of the counter didn't look capable of handling the rest of the large purchase yet.

After he came back to his senses and stopped staring at Saiya, he shakily totaled her clothes, Saiya reached into her kunai pouch to pay, but Jiraiya beat her to the desk. He placed a few bills covered in zeros on it. Saiya and the man looked at him for a second before the man quickly swiped them off the counter.

"What was that for?" Saiya hissed to Jiraiya the man gave him the change and folded the clothes into bags.

"Couldn't let a pretty lady such as yourself spend so much money while I'm here now could I?" he whispered back with a wink.

Naruto muttered unhappily, "you don't pay for my stuff, and you're supposed to be my sensei."

"You could always find a new sensei to teach you for the chunin exams now couldn't you," he muttered back. "And anyways, she's still new to the town, has obviously been traveling very far and is out of supplies. You already have a full wardrobe." Naruto grunted angrily anyways and brought his new set of kunai and shuriken up to the counter to pay.

Soon after, the three of them left the shop and started down the street with Saiya's huge bag carried on Jiraiya's back. "So where are you headed anyways," the white haired man asked happily.

"You could come to Ichiraku's with us, I want to get a snack," piped up Naruto, only to be hit on the head by Jiraiya.

"You ate that stuff for lunch and breakfast. I'd make you get something healthy for snack but it's almost dinner, so there's no way you're going to fill up on that stuff now," he retorted while Naruto rubbed his head sourly.

"I'm headed back to my temporary home, I've got to modify the shirts," Saiya told them, letting the wings re-materialize.

Jiraiya handed her the bag of clothes. "And where might that be?" he questioned.

"not that I'm not thankful for you buying all my clothes for me," she said with an apologetic grin, "but I don't want you peeping in my bedroom at night, so forgive me if I don't tell you."

"I'm not going to peep, promise," he said with his hands open. "I'm just curious as to where you're from and who you're with. It's not every day you see someone with a kekkai genkai like that," he gestured to her wings. Saiya shrugged and the wings twitched, sparkling silver in the dying light. "I've been all over the world, and this is new to me, I just wanted information."

'He's a major information source for the Hokage,' she mused. 'So he probably feels the need to check up on any obvious strangers in the city.' She glanced at Jiraiya, and then over to Naruto, who was watching her wings with interested eyes.

"Well, I'm staying in one of the Hokage's guest rooms at his house." She said, hoping that since Jiraiya knew that the Hokage already knew her, that he would stop watching her. It was getting slightly creepy. She glanced in Naruto's cerulean eyes again, while trying to avoid looking at Jiraiya and thought. He was now watching her grey eyes as well. She broke the gaze, having been struck by inspiration. "You should ask Hokage-sama if you could have dinner with me there," She said. "I'd ask, but I don't want to have to impose guests on the housekeeper on my second night." It was a perfect way to keep Jiraiya away from her.

"That's a great idea," said Jiraiya enthusiastically. "We're head over to see him now, so I'll just ask then."

"I'm going to go drop this off at my house," Naruto stated. "Meet you at the office in a few minutes." He said to Jiraiya, who nodded before both of them jumped off in different directions. Saiya jumped onto the roof of the shop and, getting her bearings, flew off to the Hokage's residence with her heavily laden bag of clothes below her, hoping upon hope, that dinner would satisfy Jiraiya's curiosity and that he wouldn't but her after that.

000

Saiya arrived back at the house without her wings showing at around six, enough time for her to rearrange all the new stuff in the closet of the borrowed room, and find an appropriate new outfit that she wanted to change into. She located one of the maids and got a pair of scissors from her, with which she cut holes in all the shirts Jiraiya had purchased for her. Then, she used pieces of the old arm and leg wraps and thread that she mooched off of Yamadori to hem the edges of the holes. With about an hour left, she decided that it was not an appropriate time to bring out the sword.

She strapped it to her waist and wandered to the courtyard door. On her way there, there was a knock on the door. Saiya peaked around the corner to watch as an ANBU handed a scroll tied with a ribbon and coin to Yamadori, who had answered the knock. Yamadori took the scroll, handed the ANBU a different medallion out of her pocket. The ANBU promptly disappeared and the brunet brought the scroll inside.

She quickly unrolled it, scanned the contents with a frown and hurried off in the direction of the kitchen. Saiya had a very good suspicion that it was to tell the cooks to prepare for two more.

000

The hour passed very quickly, and Saiya was pleased with the results. She could effectively wield the sword to severely injure the dummy. Sure, she probably would suck against a real opponent, but at least she had mastered the art of decapitating a piece of wood shaped like a small child.

She went inside and placed the sword on her bed, and proceeded to the kitchen. Saiya was not a bit surprised to see six plates out and one person already at the table. What did shock her was that Ebisu was not there to argue with Konohamaru on the correct use of the spoon. He was currently taking the peas out of one of the dishes in front of him and flicking them across the room into the window sill.

So, if Ebisu wasn't there, whom was the last seat for? The thought would be answered in a couple seconds when there was another knock at the door and the maid opened it to reveal Naruto, looking rather pleased, and Jiraiya right behind him. When they cleared out of the doorway, the Third followed them, shouting a few parting words to Ebisu, who stood at the gate to the property and who was apparently leaving for the night.

Saiya slapped her head for her stupidity. Of course the Hokage could come home to eat. Obviously, the last plate was his.

Yamadori greeted the Hokage and took his hat to a different room as he headed to the dining room where Saiya sat watching through the doorframe. He gave Saiya a crinkled smile and sat at the end of the table, two seats down from her. Jiraiya took the one diagonally across the table from Saiya, next to the Hokage. Naruto took the empty seat next to her. Konohamaru was already seated across the table.

Yamadori took the last seat, muttering something about a longstanding argument with the Hokage. It seemed that she thought it was her place to eat in the kitchen with the other servants, but the Third forbid it of her on the grounds that she did so much work for the house that she deserved to eat here. The Hokage was giving his crinkled smile to the entire place.

Saiya, however, wasn't paying attention to any of the other's scattered conversations, as she was watching Konohamaru out of the corner of her eye while he blatantly stared at her. Naruto was watching the scene with fascination, and his gaze kept flicking between Saiya and Konohamaru, depending on who twitched.

Eventually, he asked "who are you?" and Naruto turned to pay attention to the answer. It dawned on Saiya that she had never introduced herself to Jiraiya or Naruto despite having gone shopping with them twice. Jiraiya was listening for the answer too, just much more subtly.

"I'm Kawanami Saiya. I'm new to this village." She said with a smile that she reserved for little children.

"Well, I'm Konohamaru. I'm the grandson of the Hokage." He said proudly. "And someday, I'm going to be better than him, and I'll be Hokage!" Sarutobi momentarily paused his conversation to direct his crinkled smile at the boy, who returned it with a huge grin.

If it was most any other person, Saiya would have said that she knew them already, but she preferred to let the child think what he wanted.

"That's Uzumaki Naruto." He pointed to Naruto across the table who puffed out his chest at being recognized. "He's my boss."

"Oh really," Saiya asked with a big sister kind of smile, "why is that?"

"Cause he's my rival! And he's going to teach me to be a great ninja!" he answered proudly.

"Ninja huh" She said with a laugh and a grin, "I'm going to be a great ninja too," she said back to him. "And when I'm old and done with fighting, I'm going to find a way back to my old home and I'll tell my friends how great a time I had here."

Saiya smiled at the thought, but then frowned. That thought brought up a whole new set of problems. What if she could never return to her world, what were her parents thinking, was time even moving in her world? What if time moved slower in this world, and if she made it back, it was hundreds of years in the future? Or what it time moved slower and when she got back, she was older than her parents, but worst of all, what if she died and never made it back, what if she died as a ninja in a different dimension? No. She refused to think that way. She wouldn't die. She would train until she was good enough to beat anyone, so she could keep on living and see her family again, even if she was old, or they were old, she would live.

Konohamaru noticed the change in her expression. "What's wrong?" he pestered.

"Just thinking about my parents. Wondering if they miss me," she said.

"Don't they know you're here?"

"No. I kind of ran away from home. They didn't want me to become a ninja." She lied for the last part, but it probably would be true. Her parents never allowed Saiya to do anything dangerous. They would only go so far as to allow the most defensive and nonviolent of the martial arts so that she would know how to protect herself from everyone else in the world, who her father claimed were all muggers, rapists, mafia members and drug dealers, no matter how nice they looked.

Saiya was slightly depressed at the thought that she really had disappeared from home, and in all probability, her parents thought she ran away, but Konohamaru seemed to think otherwise. "That's so cool! You have nobody to bug you, or tell you what to do anymore, and you're going to be really strong and show them that they were wrong and you're a great ninja!"

Saiya smiled, but her heart wasn't in it. "Yeah."

OOOXXXOOOXXX

END

OOOXXXOOOXXX

Please Review. Constructive criticism, flames, happy notes, whatever you want.


	7. Seventh Primary

"Speaking"

'Thoughts'

Reviewing is much appreciated.

OOOXXXOOOXXX

Sixth Primary

OOOXXXOOOXXX

The rest of the dinner passed in a haze of conversations, the topics greatly varied, from recent ANBU missions, to the status of the newest batch of academy students, to the excitement for the upcoming chunin exams and ridiculous training schedules that Naruto wanted to implement and Jiraiya vetoed.

Saiya was surprised that she could talk freely in the atmosphere, and not spill too much information, though she slipped a little while conversing with the boy next to her. Naruto was upset when she said she knew who Sasuke was, as well as when she took away the surprise he had wanted to give her in stating that he was going to be the winner in the chunin exams.

Saiya told the blond a little about where she came from, a boring village that had advanced technology, but no idea what to do with it. He was rather surprised that there were absolutely no ninjas in her village, and intrigued by the idea of sports as a substitute for the shinobi way of life. He finished by saying that if he ever went with her to her village, he would become the best football player (whatever the heck that was) and win the Superbowl and show Sasuke that he was better. Saiya laughed at this comment and said that she was sure he would.

Towards the end, Sarutobi asked Saiya to wait for him after the dinner was finished so that they could talk about the exams. This launched Naruto into another bout of chunin exam fever that carried them over the nine o'clock time limit Yamadori put on dinner. She shoed them all away to the living room and called the cooks in to clean up.

In the living room, Yamadori took a seat in the far corner and began lecturing Konohamaru on proper conduct at the dinner table, as she had been unable to while Naruto had been shouting his news to the general audience at dinner. Jiraiya and Naruto were on a couch talking about some random shinobi thing that was probably a 'top secret chunin exam strategy' that involved Naruto bribing Jiraiya with promises of sexy-jutsu.

Sarutobi motioned for Saiya to leave the room with him for a few minutes, so they left out the second set of doors that led straight into the courtyard. It was cool outside, but not cold. There was a slight breeze, but nothing other than that to disturb the perfect night. The two sat for a minute on a bench by the walkway, looking up at the clouds as the raced over the stars and the crescent moon.

"So you want to enter the chunin exams," he said, into the peaceful silence.

"Yeah," Saiya said, still watching as a particularly large cloud blocked out the light of the orb above them.

"But technically, according to your story, you're not even a genin," he stated.

Saiya looked down, upset that he noticed that flaw. "Yeah," she admitted quietly to her feet.

"You think you would be able to make it in the exams anyways?" he pressed.

That was a difficult question. Saiya had never fought anyone before, not the way that the ninjas did. All she knew was about twenty different aikido ways to throw an attacker off her if they grabbed her in some dark alley at night. Other than that, she had basic weapons skills, six semi-useable jutsus plus the academy level ones, and a pair of wings. It would be hard to try to fight without having put those to use in such a situation before, and she really didn't want to be injured in a fight because of it.

So, the correct answer was probably 'no' but Saiya wasn't about to give up that easily, and decided to go with the more ambiguous answer. "I don't know," she whispered.

"Well, maybe you should wait, until after you get better. I'll put you on a genin team; you can train with them until you think you're ready. I'll honor the exam form you have at any time. When you want, I'll have you face off with another chunin in a fight and we'll determine if you pass from that." He turned and smiled. "Would that be a better option?"

"Yeah," Saiya grudgingly admitted, "it would better, but things are going to happen soon, and I really want to be a ninja now," she told him.

The Hokage nodded, understanding that there were going to be problems in the upcoming matches and that she knew due to where she came from. "I'll make sure the offer's always open, no matter what happens," he said, as he already had the sneaking suspicion that his time was coming to a close.

Saiya smiled sadly, as she knew that he knew. "But that's not the problem, becoming a chunin I mean. I want to help; to change what I think is going to happen. That's why I want to be a ninja," she said.

The Hokage nodded and smiled. 'The girl has a good heart. She would make a fine ninja.' He thought. 'There's just the problem that a heart isn't everything. She'd die if I gave her the responsibilities now. In a few months, it'd be different, but…' the Hokage didn't want to finish the thought. He preferred to be an optimist in a world of death and fighting so this morbid thinking wasn't what he wanted. He could trust this girl, for now, to be a genin, get her a teacher, tell the teacher to instantiate her as chunin as they saw fit. That would work. She could be present at the exams, almost the entire village would be there anyways, and he could keep her near to know when and where the attack would come. That would work. Yes. That's what he would do. He knew that it would probably do both of them no good to ask for the future right off, and she probably wouldn't tell him anyways for fear of upsetting too much of the balance, but it wouldn't hurt to see her reaction just a few minutes ahead.

"come visit me in my office tomorrow after lunch," he said, "I'm going to get you a teacher, you can meet him then, and they'll know what to do about the whole chunin thing," he told her while he rose from the cold slab of stone. "Don't worry too much though. Everything will turn out fine," he said, with his famous crinkled smile. "You'll see." And with that, he wandered back inside to act as though nothing had happened and spend the night privately worrying, his fears now virtually confirmed, about what Orochimaru could be planning for the tournament.

Saiya stood and spread her wings, not caring if she scared the maids out of their wits, and took off into the sky. She was worried, and she needed time to think. This night seemed the perfect time to do so. The air in the sky was great for clearing her head.

I fly  
On feathered wings I soar  
Through cloudless skies  
Of midnight blue  
And all you can see  
Of me  
Is nothing  
When my shadow  
Takes out a star

The conversation had given her much to ponder. She wondered if she was making the right decision. She knew that she was right in not participating in the exams, but she realized that her training would have to step up, and fast. It was becoming essential to know much more about fighting than she already did. She wanted to be someone helpful when the attack came, someone who would survive at the very least.

The girl studied her wings, spread on either side of her. They were a great gift from whomever she had gotten them. They shone pure silver in the moonlight, probably enough that anyone looking would see them and wonder. The flight feathers were long, nearly seven feet on either side of her, in a beautiful line that was at the same time, a curve. It was amazing to behold how they bore her up, or across, as they were doing now, so easily. The human race had been trying to fly since forever, and had only succeeded in building a machine to carry them up. But here she was, gliding slowly down on her own. It was a great feeling, but a responsible feeling. Like she had to do something with the gift. She just didn't know what.

I glide  
On sparkling currents I float  
Though gusty days  
At breakneck speeds  
And all you can feel  
Of me  
Is the breeze  
Long after I pass

What was Saiya doing in this world anyways, what was her goal? Was there something that she had to change? Let the third live, or keep Sasuke from Orochimaru, stop the Akatsuki. No. she definitely wouldn't do the last one. Several of her favorite characters, Itachi and Deidara, were in the Akatsuki; she wouldn't be the one to kill them. Maybe it was to stop Sasuke from becoming Orochimaru's underling, and then he wouldn't gain the power to kill her favorite characters.

I swim  
Through shadows of blue, I dive  
Effortlessly on air  
And there is nothing you can see  
Of me  
So high  
I might dance  
With the meteors  
And never be seen

What would have happened anyways, if the Akatsuki had found her before Kiba had. What then? She definitely would have tried to join them, but she wasn't a shinobi yet, she would have been a hindrance. Most likely, she would have died, maybe by her idol's hand. That would have been terrible.

And I weep  
So lonely in the world  
No one to share  
The excitement  
Of blocking out the stars  
Of racing on the wind  
Of dancing with the meteors  
With me

So, back from her little tangent about Akatsuki, what was her goal? It was somewhat decided that she wanted to keep Sasuke away from the snake, but that would require powers of persuasion that she didn't have. She could tell Kakashi that he wasn't going to listen, but that wouldn't stop him. The other jonin? No. that just didn't seem like the right answer. If she was going to stop him, it would have to be by her own words, which he wasn't likely to take. So stopping the Uchiha didn't seem possible.

If that wasn't her goal, then maybe it was supposed to be something else. Protecting something perhaps? Finding something? Just being in the right place at the right time to deter an action? It could be anything. Too many uncertainties. Too many variables. What if she messed up? What if the world fell into chaos and the entire plot was ruined? It would be all her fault, and Saiya didn't want that. There was just too much to think about.

I watch  
The people on the ground  
So longingly gazing up at  
The sky  
And dreaming they might be  
Where I am  
When all I dream of  
Is of being  
Where they are.

The night was getting cold, and the wind was picking up speed at the altitude she was flying at. Saiya turned back, and flew low, in front of the faces of the hokages carved into the stone. She watched them go. They were so much better from her point of view than they ever were in the anime or manga. It would be wonderful to stay here forever, but she had the suspicion that eventually something would happen to take her home. So she chose to enjoy the beauty of the stone as she glided slowly past.

She glided down and landed softly in the garden of the Hokage's house. She slipped over to the door to the living room, sliding it slowly open, without a sound other than the rustle of her wings.

Saiya closed the door behind her and made her way down the hall, into her room. She slipped on a pair of sweatpants and a loose shirt, and then, with her wings still out in order to keep her warm, she curled on top of the covers and went to sleep.

000

Saiya woke the next morning to a loud shriek and a crash, followed by slamming of doors and another shriek. Having stayed up fairly late in the cold the previous night, Saiya felt a bit sleep deprived and moody at being woken up so rudely. She set her bare feet on the cold wood floor and stretched before wandering clumsily to the closet to change. It was when she tried to pull off the shirt she had slept in that she ran into problems.

For some reason, her wings were still out, which struck her as odd, seeing as they always retracted at night. Maybe it was due to the fact that it was cold and she needed them to stay warm. But that was something for her to ponder later. She stepped away from the closet and rubbed her eyes to clear out the sleep. That's when she noticed that there were a bunch of shattered pieces of china in her doorway. All she could think was "oh no."

She quickly retracted her wings and pulled on a good shirt and pair of pants. She ran her fingers through her hair and let her wings come out again situating the shirt correctly in the process. Since the maid had already seen them, there was no use trying not to scare them anymore. May as well get it over with instead of freaking them out by releasing them some other time.

She knelt down and scooped up the shattered porcelain onto the tray that had fallen next to them. She ran to the bathroom quickly and grabbed a towel to soak up the tea that had spilled all over the floor. She left a fresh towel over the majority of the spill as she jogged down the hall toward the kitchen, hoping to find maids before they came hunting for her.

But luck just wasn't on her side that morning, as Saiya soon found out. The hysterical maid was dragging her friend out of the kitchen, followed by Yamadori, with the two cooks watching behind her when Saiya came around the corner. The maid shrieked and cowered behind her friend.

Saiya immediately realized what a mistake it had been to keep her wings out. The second maid noticed them and immediately went just as insane as the first maid. They both shrieked and ran off around the far corner of the hall and muttered panic-stricken words about demons possessing innocent children and demon possessed not-so-innocent children.

Saiya and Yamadori were left standing in the hall opposite each other. They both stood their ground for a while, just staring. The cooks were surveying the situation out of the doorway with mixed emotions.

"I thought Katei was lying when she said there was a monster in your room, but evidently not. What are you?" she finally said, breaking the uneasy silence that had stretched between them.

"What do you mean 'what am I,' I'm a ninja. This is my kekkai genkai," Saiya answered, somewhat insulted at being called a monster. "I kept it hidden in hopes that you wouldn't freak out, and rightly so," Saiya said.

"That doesn't make sense to me, you hiding things from me, from the Hokage," Yamadori answered with narrowed eyes. "It seems to me that you are just the kind of person to be a spy from another village sent to use your power to bring down our Hokage."

"Well, I can assure you that I am not here to do that. The Hokage already knows about my abilities and still allowed me to stay here," Saiya said, trying not to be angry or show fear and turn the war of words into a war of frying pans and broken teacups, as that was what the housekeeper and Saiya held in their hands.

"Oh really, and just how can I be sure that you're not some demon sent to kill us in our sleep," she hissed.

"Because I told you she's not." Said a very tired old voice from the end of the hall behind the angry brunet. "Honestly, did you think I'd let her in my house if she was a possible threat to your life or my own?"

Yamadori turned quickly around to greet the Hokage as he shuffled sleepily down the hall. She flushed and muttered something about not meaning to distrust his judgment.

"I've already talked to her; she's just got a unique ability that we've never seen before. She's not a demon either, so you can stop worrying," Sarutobi said with a yawn. "Nothings going to happen except that we'll all get a little more sleep." And with that, he turned back down the hall and went to his room, shooing the maids back out from around the corner as he went. An awkward silence ensued.

Yamadori had watched the Hokage go skeptically. Obviously, she had been all fired up to keep the argument going for a while. She was not really ready to let the topic go, but the Hokage's attitude had put a serious damper on her anger. Saiya was just relieved and thankful that they were not blaming stuff on her, shouting insults as she thought they would, or accusing her of random acts of treason.

The girl took a deep breath to calm down. She spoke directly to the first maid, Katei, who had been the one to break the china. "What would you like me to do with this?" She said, breaking the thick silence that had settled over them. She held out the tray of shattered pieces. Katei rushed forward, looking slightly embarrassed, and took the tray before scuttling off to the kitchen with it.

Yamadori too took deep breaths with her eyes closed, in an attempt to calm herself down the rest of the way. "So you're not a demon." She stated after a couple of seconds. The statement was not really a question or a fact. It was a confirmation of what the Hokage had told her so that she could start to smooth out the ripples of tension that were present in the hallway.

"No, I'm not," was Saiya's answer. Short and to the point, as not to start anything or allow any room for doubt.

"And you're not here to kill people."

"That's correct."

"Alright. That makes me feel a little better." She turned and grinned sheepishly, trying to lighten the mood. "You know, for a moment there, I thought I was going to have to fight a ninja assassin or something," she said, holding up her frying pan.

"And for a moment, I thought I was going to be beat over the head by a crazed lady with a skillet," Saiya said with an identical sheepish grin.

Suddenly, it was as if the air had a happy light feeling to it, and happy breezes were trying to play with their hair through the cracks in the sliding doors. Yamadori was feeling much better now. "So what did you call it again? A kakky genkkay or something?"

"A kekkai genkai. It's a special thing that some families can do because they passed that ability down through the bloodline for generations." Saiya was feeling much more relaxed about the whole situation too. The cooks were gossiping happily between themselves and the second maid now and the heavy atmosphere had lifted.

"Oh, so you ability is to grow feathers…?" she took a step and peered around trying to get a better look at whatever was silvery and fluffy on Saiya's back, though she was far to far away to see properly.

Saiya fanned her wings to the shock of the house staff watching her. The maid and the female cook gaped in awe and then scuttled over to her get a closer look.

"Can I touch them?" the cook asked, as her partner and Yamadori slowly made their way over.

"Sure," Saiya answered, happy that they weren't freaking out anymore and that they actually liked her gift. They immediately plunged their hands into the mass of feathers, and muttering happily at how soft they were. The fingers felt good itching against the rough stalks of the feathers, naturally preening them into a glossy shine. Saiya smiled contentedly as the second cook and the housekeeper started rubbing them too.

"And here I thought that there was some huge fluffy grey monster attached to your back," Yamadori said laughing. "That's what Katei said when she sprinted into me earlier," she said with a grin.

Katei, who had come back out of the kitchen and joined in with the preening, flushed bright pink and muttered something inaudible. The second maid, who was standing close to her, laughed, causing Katei to blush even more.

"Can we see you fly?" questioned the female cook. "That'd be so cool."

"Can you take me flying?" asked the second maid, instantly.

"Oh me too!" the cook

Katei was still slightly embarrassed at having made such a mistake, but was brave enough to ask "Me three?"

"I'd ask, but I'm probably too heavy for you," Yamadori said in a somewhat depressed tone.

"I second that notion," the male cook said sadly.

"I don't know," Saiya muttered. "I've never carried anything more than a large shopping bag before."

"Oh, please!" the three of them begged.

"I don't think so," Saiya said remorsefully. "I really have to go train for the exams, and I've also got to talk to the Hokage as well. Maybe some other time, after I learn how to carry more weight."

OOOXXXOOOXXX

END

OOOXXXOOOXXX

MINE! I own the poem. I made it. Don't copy. Mine. If I find you did….insert evil laugh here…insert violent bloody death threat here…insert more evil laughs here…get the picture? If you don't, you have issues.

Cookies to people who review! I love to hear from you. Sorry if you don't like my poetry. It's an old one that I didn't know would fit this story so well. Tell me what you think.


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